The concept of cultural evolution was fundamental to the foundation of academic musicology
and the subfield of comparative musicology, but largely disappeared from discussion after …

This review begins with a brief outline of the key concepts of Darwinian archaeology. Its
history is then summarized, beginning with its emergence as a significant theoretical focus …

Comparison is fundamental to evolutionary anthropology. When scientists study
chimpanzee cognition, for example, they compare chimp performance on cognitive tasks to …

Researchers have long been fascinated by the strong continuities evident in the oral
traditions associated with different cultures. According to the 'historic-geographic'school, it is …

Identifying the determinants of cumulative cultural evolution is a key issue in the
interdisciplinary field of cultural evolution. A widely held view is that large and well …

Technology as Human Social Tradition outlines a novel approach to studying variability and
cumulative change in human technologyÑprominent research themes in both archaeology …

Genealogy has long been one of humanity's greatest obsessions. But with the rise of
genetics, and increasing media attention through television programs like Who Do You …

Cladistic theories of human evolution, derived from biological theories of speciation, are
currently being advanced to explain worldwide distributions of language, culture, and …

This paper explores the differences in the design and performance of acoustic and new
digital musical instruments, arguing that with the latter there is an increased encapsulation of …

Social scientists can learn a lot from evolutionary biology-from systematics and principles of
evolutionary ecology to theories of social interaction including competition, conflict and …